Total Immersion is something all gamers want and game designers want to deliver, except that lot at Activision who just want our money.
Over the last few weeks I've played several new games, even generally slated games and been completely immersed in them, I mean Saturday I played the new SmackDown! vs RAW game for 12 solid hours when it felt more like about 4 or maybe 5, Friday I was off ill and cooked up another 7 or 8 on Mass Effect lying in bed. Those are two examples, from very different games, but my thought is, no matter how hard the designer of the games wants you to become the player character a lot of people will not.
Graphics, interface, story & "feel" for the game can really help but, I think that two uncontrollable factors (from the stand-point of a developer and designer) play a much larger role in becoming totally immersed in a game, they aren't even complicated, time and allowing yourself to.
Time is self explanatory, the more you play a game the more you become attached to characters, playing a game for stupidly long periods of time with out doing anything else really allows you to connect with the other characters and the player character. Allowing yourself to kind of is (self explanatory) too, but probably requires more justifying to most of you. We all (OK from last weeks thread, most of us) have our passions something we're fanatical over, music (classical or heavy metal), spelling, certain games, civil liberties. But on a flip side we all have our insecurities, I know mine, my appearance and how other people perceive me, two common things but with the advantage that they cannot be affected by a game.
Now imagine you're young, and you've never really experienced loss, you find yourself totally immersed in GTA4, the options you make contribute to Kate being shot, I was immersed in that game, I could barely see past the thin layer of red that covered my eyes as a result, other people totally immersed might react differently, they might become very sad at the action. Similar in Fo3 where James sacrifices himself, a lot of people on here think jokingly, son of a *****, I just saved you! Where as I was thinking "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" I've ventured away from the point I was making....
What I'm trying to say is, for those that never experience total immersion, however each of us define it, might just be afraid of getting caught up in a story, you play a game long enough and allow yourself to become immersed enough, you become the main character especially if the game offers choice and your not trying for a alignment, you making decisions that you would do in that situation. Everything that effects the main character suddenly effects you to, not everyone likes it, so the next game you play you don't allow yourself to become so immersed in the character, and so on and so forth.
So, what do you all think about that? If I've struck a nerve what game stopped you wanting to become totally immersed again and more importantly why did it? Am I just speaking sickness induced gibberish? Take a short pause to have a think and reply.
Note: Hey, spelled it right this week, sorry for the bad spelling last time was trying something out.
Over the last few weeks I've played several new games, even generally slated games and been completely immersed in them, I mean Saturday I played the new SmackDown! vs RAW game for 12 solid hours when it felt more like about 4 or maybe 5, Friday I was off ill and cooked up another 7 or 8 on Mass Effect lying in bed. Those are two examples, from very different games, but my thought is, no matter how hard the designer of the games wants you to become the player character a lot of people will not.
Graphics, interface, story & "feel" for the game can really help but, I think that two uncontrollable factors (from the stand-point of a developer and designer) play a much larger role in becoming totally immersed in a game, they aren't even complicated, time and allowing yourself to.
Time is self explanatory, the more you play a game the more you become attached to characters, playing a game for stupidly long periods of time with out doing anything else really allows you to connect with the other characters and the player character. Allowing yourself to kind of is (self explanatory) too, but probably requires more justifying to most of you. We all (OK from last weeks thread, most of us) have our passions something we're fanatical over, music (classical or heavy metal), spelling, certain games, civil liberties. But on a flip side we all have our insecurities, I know mine, my appearance and how other people perceive me, two common things but with the advantage that they cannot be affected by a game.
Now imagine you're young, and you've never really experienced loss, you find yourself totally immersed in GTA4, the options you make contribute to Kate being shot, I was immersed in that game, I could barely see past the thin layer of red that covered my eyes as a result, other people totally immersed might react differently, they might become very sad at the action. Similar in Fo3 where James sacrifices himself, a lot of people on here think jokingly, son of a *****, I just saved you! Where as I was thinking "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" I've ventured away from the point I was making....
What I'm trying to say is, for those that never experience total immersion, however each of us define it, might just be afraid of getting caught up in a story, you play a game long enough and allow yourself to become immersed enough, you become the main character especially if the game offers choice and your not trying for a alignment, you making decisions that you would do in that situation. Everything that effects the main character suddenly effects you to, not everyone likes it, so the next game you play you don't allow yourself to become so immersed in the character, and so on and so forth.
So, what do you all think about that? If I've struck a nerve what game stopped you wanting to become totally immersed again and more importantly why did it? Am I just speaking sickness induced gibberish? Take a short pause to have a think and reply.
Note: Hey, spelled it right this week, sorry for the bad spelling last time was trying something out.
